Shifting states.

This is the tourist information board at Lalbagh, Bangalore. There is nothing out of place in this shot, unless you zoom in onto the map of India.

In my 6 six years of learning geography in school, and ever since, I always believed that Karnataka had a really long and beautiful coastline on the Western shore. But, the person who came up with this masterpiece, does not seem to think so. Maybe he is a Malayali living in Mumbai, who would love to get his homeland closer.

Bangalore's Back-Breakers.

Vroooomm...Vroooomm...Vroooomm...Rrrrrr....Vroooomm...Vroooomm...Thud.. Clang... Ching.....Oh S****!!!

Dont worry.. I have neither gone bonkers nor am trying to be a one man rock band or something. This is the kind of sound sequence that every biker in Bangalore would have heard atleast once in his lifetime. And the source of all this - Bangalore's ubiquitous (so called) speed-breakers. These monsters can be seen (rather, NOT seen) everywhere. They come in all sizes and shapes. The recently introduced 'stretch' ones, the more traditional smooth ones and the absolutely illegal 'more-the-height-more-effective-it-is' kind. And it is the third kind which is responsible for the afore mentioned audio effects.

Speed breakers are not much of a concern if you are travelling by a BMTC bus. But, since the day I bought my cruiser, I have come to realise the apparent (mis)use of these things. I have already bottomed out my low ground clearance bike quite a number of times. And it gets just worse with a pillion. Not that I am completely against speed breakers, but when concerned citizens start making their own on arterial roads, that is when you know that something is going wrong. As per this post, there are only 282 authorised speed breakers in Bangalore. The rest are all back-breakers and death traps. In fact, the number of accidents caused by these breakers just keeps on increasing. The day is not far, when we could have motocross races on Bangalore's roads. I just hope that the Lokayukta lives up to his promise of taking out the unauthorised speed breakers, before this fantasy becomes a reality.